After two years of suspense, Tariq Ramadan presented himself to the Paris court on Thursday for further questioning.
There, he was notified of new charges, for the facts alleged by Mounia Rabbouj, one of his first accusers.
The 58-year-old Islamologist is now facing five indictments for rape.
Who are his accusers?
And how does he defend himself?
The Parisian takes stock.
The five women whose accusations are worth indictments in Ramadan
Mounia Rabbouj.
These are the accusations of this 47-year-old woman that are today worth to Tariq Ramadan his fifth indictment for rape.
Mounia Rabbouj is however not an unknown in this file with drawers: this former escort girl, civil party during the trial for procuring of Carlton, is even one of the first accusers of the preacher.
This indictment had been requested by the Paris prosecutor's office fairly quickly after the filing of a complaint on March 7, 2018. But the judges had suspended their decision until then.
Mounia Rabbouj accuses Ramadan of having raped her nine times from 2013 to 2014. In France, London and Brussels.
In July 2018, after a first close interrogation of the judges, the forty-something hesitates to withdraw her complaint.
Last July, she was auditioned again.
The complainant explains that she felt “stuck” in this relationship.
"He threatened to expose the things I had told him about my life" but "I never agreed with him brutalizing me", according to his account.
Henda Ayari.
She is the one by whom the scandal happened.
On October 17, 2017, this former Salafist, who has since taken off her veil, filed a complaint against Tariq Ramadan.
She accuses the Muslim theologian of having raped her in a Parisian hotel, five years earlier, in the spring of 2012, without being able to remember the exact date of the facts.
In her complaint, Henda Ayari describes a very brutal forced sex, punctuated by insults and humiliations.
On February 2, 2018, Ramadan was indicted for “rape” and placed in pre-trial detention.
He will stay there until November 2018.
A woman nicknamed "Christelle".
A few days after Henda Ayari, on October 26, 2017, this woman disabled in one leg by dystrophy lodged a complaint for a “rape of a vulnerable person”.
The facts would have taken place on October 9, 2009, at the Hilton hotel in Lyon, before a Ramadan conference, met via Facebook ten months earlier, during the night of New Year's Eve 2008. Like Henda, Christelle (first name of borrowing) describes a scene of extreme sexual violence, beatings, name-calling and humiliation.
The Islamologist was indicted for these facts on February 2, 2018.
A 37-year-old woman, "Noémie".
If the investigators had not discovered pornographic photos of Noémie (assumed name) on Ramadan's computer, this Catholic mother would never have spoken.
First heard as a witness, Noémie recounts that her relationship with Ramadan began at the end of 2015. On the Internet, first, through intimate confessions.
Then in "real life", in spring 2016, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Paris.
By one and only sexual intercourse, of great brutality.
“What really turns him on is the women who don't want to,” she says, adding, “I was very scared.
A few weeks after this hearing, she took the plunge and filed a complaint.
Ramadan is indicted for these facts last February.
A fifth woman, "Sofia" who did not file a complaint.
Like Noémie, Sofia (first name changed) was also found thanks to the photographs stored in Tariq Ramadan's computer.
“After every sex with him, I felt really dirty,” she told investigators.
Unlike Noémie, the young woman did not wish to file a complaint.
But the alleged assaults she told investigators were serious enough that the judges decided to indict the Islamologist last February.
These other women who accuse Ramadan
A sixth complainant, in Switzerland.
On April 13, 2018, “Brigitte” (assumed name) filed a complaint against what she described as a very brutal rape.
The facts allegedly took place overnight, in October 2018, in a hotel room in Geneva, while the Swiss did not maintain any sentimental relationship with Ramadan.
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Since his release from prison in freedom, the Muslim intellectual has been subject to judicial control which allows him to leave France, but only to comply with summons from Swiss justice.
Next convocation in Geneva: early November.
Another plaintiff, in France, without prosecution.
On July 12, 2019, this woman filed a complaint for rape in a meeting.
In her account to the prosecutor, “Elvira” claims to have been raped by Tariq Ramadan and “a friend” of the latter in a room at the Sofitel hotel in Lyon, May 23, 2014. But the investigators' checks did not not allowed to corroborate the version of the facts of the fiftieth birthday.
How does Ramadan defend himself?
He denies it, fiercely.
The preacher, married to Iman Ramadan, a Breton convert with whom he had four children, initially denies any extramarital affair.
During months.
But his denials do not stand up to a piece of evidence delivered by Mounia Rabbouj: a dress stained with the semen of the Islamologist.
In June 2018, the latter finally admits adulterous relations with this woman, and former mistresses who have testified.
Today, the Islamologist recognizes sexual relations with the plaintiffs, certainly "fiery, of domination", but consented.
He also denies any kind of hold, described by the complainants.
"I did not exercise
religious
or
psychological
influence
, I did not
manipulate
and even less
violate
", he writes in his book "Duty of truth", published in September 2019 (Presses du Châtelet).
The man claims to be the victim of the vengeance of women "jealous, furious at having been rejected".
In support of his statements, Tariq Ramadan produced torrents of SMS, but also videos and 1000 photos of an erotic or pornographic nature, exchanged with the complainants.
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Indicted for rape, Tariq Ramadan attacks his accusers
Finally, the Muslim intellectual now also seems to focus his defense on Islamophobia, believing to suffer a racist harassment from the French justice.
To feed this line, he appointed in the spring a new team of five defenders led by Pascal Garbarini, a tenor of the bar.